-Political and cultural issues have divided
the university community in recent years.
What impact will this have on academia?
-I think one thing that happens
is students come to a university and it changes them.
You know, the experience of living in this kind of community
changes them, and then that in turn
sort of drives some of the reaction.
-This is the reason why we have to stand up for free speech
that's really offensive
because what offends you may be different
than what offends someone else.
-That's next on Seattle University Conversations.
Now your host, Joni Balter. -Good afternoon.
Welcome to Seattle University's Spring Conversation program.
Our guests today are University of Washington
President Ana Mari Cauce and Seattle University's
own president, Eduardo Penalver. Thank you both for being here.
You've been a little busy lately, just a teeny bit.
Seated next to me is Abigail Berhane.
She is a newly minted Seattle University graduate,
and she is headed for Georgetown University Graduate School
a couple months from now.
And she's going to be studying global politics and security.
Abigail joins me in conducting today's interview.
Thank you very much for that.
President Cauce, we start with you.
Since we are discussing political polarization
and its impacts on universities,
what are the broad challenges of leading universities
in such a polarized climate as the one we face today?
-Well, one of the biggest challenges
that we have that's unique to being a public university
that partly intersects and partly doesn't with that
is the whole issue of resources.
For example, at the University of Washington,
we still are getting less state investment
than we were before the recession.
So we're getting less now than we were 15 years ago.
And together with that,
though, we are then also constrained in a number of ways.
We are constrained in terms of what we can charge for tuition,
even for our high-income students.
But also, for example,
we cannot, like Columbia and Dartmouth
and, you know, NYU, et cetera, we can't close off our campus.
We can't gate our campus so it's only our students in our campus.
And so, you know, we have on the one hand,
these incredible responsibilities
that come from being a state university,
including the fact that demand is going through the roof,
but at the same time not the resources
that we need to do them.
And like I say, in a politically polarized climate,
that is particularly difficult
because the responsibilities are greater.
I think then the other thing that I think that we share,
whether we're public or private, is that, you know,
universities are quickly losing the public's confidence.
And it's for different reasons.
On the more conservative end,
it is about the polarization
and the fact that they believe that we lean too liberal.
And then on the more liberal end,
it really is about cost and the feeling
that we charge too much and our students come out of --
and so it's hard enough to deal with the fact
that there's losing confidence in our universities.
But they're for different reasons
and so you're constantly trying to balance them.
-I think you've touched on almost every question
that we have to come,
so we're going to come back to some of those.
President Penalver, the same question.
What are your challenges in managing a university
in today's polarized climate?
-Well, I'll -- first of all,
thanks for inviting us and it's a great topic
to be thinking about and talking about right now.
And has been for a while.
You know, I think about it,
and I'll just talk about this in general terms,
right, rather than necessarily the challenges
we experience here, but --
-Yeah, we want to keep this at 30,000 feet.
That's much of the goal here today.
-But I -- you can think of it through, I think,
three different dimensions, right?
So polarization on campus and then polarization off campus.
And then the other way is maybe polarization at the campus
or kind of directed at the campus,
so which is a sort of manifestation of the second one,
right?
But polarization on campus,
and this is going to affect different universities
differently, you know,
I think becomes harder to just sort of hold
the community together
when we have a broader range of perspectives at the faculty,
on the student body, and the staff.
And so whatever is happening
in the broader society is going to have an impact
on the nature of discourse on the campus.
And that's, you know, as polarization increases,
that does touch university life.
You know, so at Cornell,
being in the middle of upstate New York,
you know, there was a, you know,
a heavy kind of Trump influence on the staff side, right?
Because the staff were drawn from that region
of the state often.
It depends on the kind of staff, right?
And then the faculty tend to lean left, right?
And so you get people,
you know, different things landing differently
on the campus based on what role you occupied.
-If I might elaborate on this a little bit,
because this is something that I've studied a bit,
in terms of our campuses.
You know, there's this perception out there
that somehow, you know,
our students, you know, aren't rough enough
and that they've been coddled.
And so forth and so on. We've all read about this.
But the truth is that the diversity
that we have managed to bring onto campus,
the fact that we have more students of color,
that we have more first-generation students,
that we have this diversity on campuses
at the same time that our society has become,
in fact, more cocooned.
Our neighborhoods are less diverse than they used to be
because they've become more segregated by income.
And so you have students coming here
that really have had a huge difference
in experiences coming together in a way
that didn't used to be the case.
The example I give, since we both went to Yale,
Yale was the first time that I left home.
So I lived in graduate students' dorms.
And the dorm that I was in had two rooms
that shared one bathroom.
One room was larger, still small, but larger.
It had a fireplace. It had a window seat.
The other room was very barren. Why?
The reason that those rooms were that way
is it used to be a student who brought their valet.
So the fact that we didn't have this kind of polarization --
-Maybe a little design work coming to Yale pretty soon.
-Exactly.
I mean, what I'm saying is, talk about coddled.
That we really -- it really is now compared to 20 years ago,
50 years ago, et cetera, we have more diversity on campus.
That's a wonderful thing.
But then managing that in terms of the different perspectives,
which are very passionate,
that come out of lived experiences,
does create some more difficulties.
-Yeah, thank you so much. President Cauce,
what do you make of the trend
these days towards more people feeling
that colleges are not as essential as previously thought?
What is the best way
to make universities a more universally recognized value?
-Well, I want to start off by saying
that I actually think it's a very positive thing
that some of our professions
that don't require college degrees are paying better.
And I do think it's important to make sure that -- you know,
for me, it's all about making sure that there's choice.
And a lot of why students aren't going to college is
because they think that it is unaffordable.
And sometimes those students
that all of us know would get all the financial aid
in the world are the ones who know it least.
I think in terms of my own family.
My brother started off at community college
because my family thought that was all we could afford.
When, in fact,
when one of his teachers started talking to him,
it was cheaper for him to go to university
because of all the financial aid.
So that, I think, is a big part of it.
Also, I think that sometimes, and this is not surprising,
we think about short run rather than long run.
So the idea of taking a loan, even a small loan,
or not, you know, of not getting a job,
you know, at this moment seems so important
that you're not thinking about 10 years down the line.
The truth is that college is a great investment.
And this state in particular has great financial aid.
And I think what we have to do is,
how do we amplify that message?
And that's why I'm glad, I'm really glad to be here,
is we need to amplify the message that in this state,
things really are affordable
and the payoff of going to college
will last throughout a lifetime, both in terms of income,
but also in the ability to be engaged citizens,
which is so important.
-Well, and even the fact of this question,
right, is a reflection of the polarization
that you asked about at the outset, right,
that the polarization directed at universities, right?
There's a -- because we're polarized,
and because we're polarized not just ideologically, right,
but the ideology corresponds very strongly
with educational attainment, right,
and so educational attainment is very predictive
of political behavior.
There's a, you know,
one side of the political spectrum
is very motivated to be constantly attacking
higher education for political reasons,
and looking at the return on investment is one way
that they do that.
And yet the data is very clear, right,
that actually the return on a university education
has increased over time and is continuing to increase.
-Yeah.
I also think one thing that both Seattle U,
because of its mission, its Jesuit mission,
and the University of Washington,
because of its public mission, does well,
is we care a lot about community engagement.
And I think in too many communities,
they hesitate to send their children to college
because they feel it will pull them out of their community,
and what we're trying to do is make sure
that with their degrees,
they can better serve their communities.
-Yeah.
I know you both just touched on this,
but one reason college seemed less approachable is,
again, the rising cost,
with some charging as much as $95,000 a year.
In my own experience this year,
I had a choice between Columbia and Georgetown grad schools,
and price drove my decision.
Let's face it, colleges charge too much.
What does that add to the polarization?
Again, just highlighting.
-Well, again, I think that,
you know, it's important to look at net price.
I do think that there are some places that,
you know, quite frankly, people have written about it.
Steve Sample, who used to be at USC,
wrote about this openly,
that what you wanted to do is raise the price
and then raise the financial aid,
and so people would think they were getting a big deal,
and I think that that is a rather cynical strategy.
But I think that,
again, you need to look at what the real price is.
At a public university like ours,
I go to meetings all the time, and I ask them,
how much do you think our tuition is?
And almost everyone thinks it's over $25,000 a year.
It's closer to $12,000 a year.
But the truth is that all, even middle-income students,
are getting financial aid,
and all our moderate to
low-income students don't pay any tuition.
And on top of that,
it's not just that they don't pay any tuition,
but we help towards the cost of living,
which at our university, the cost of living
is higher than actually the cost of tuition.
So I do think that there probably are some places
that are a bit cynical in terms of where they set their tuition,
because, you know, if you look at the discount rate, it's huge.
But I do think that part of it
is that people don't have the information.
And of course, cost is going to drive it.
It drove the decision for me,
both as undergraduate and as a graduate student.
-Yeah, it's a really tough -- it's a tough question,
and I would distinguish between undergraduate and graduate
and professional education as well.
But at the undergraduate level,
you do have these very high discount rates, and it leads
to this opacity, which I think is a problem, right?
It deters people from even seeking out their options.
But on the other hand,
it does generate really important redistribution
within the student body, right?
So parents, really affluent parents can pay full tuition,
and then that, in part,
funds financial aid for students from lower income backgrounds.
And so, you know, there's a reason for it,
but it is a real challenge in terms of
how you communicate to prospective students
that they should, you know, take the plunge.
And the reality is,
if you look at -- especially at the undergraduate level,
over the last decade, the cost has not increased, right?
Because even as tuition has increased,
the discount rate has increased just as fast,
and in some cases, even faster.
-I think that, you know,
what President Penalver just said about opacity is huge.
And so, for example, we, and a number of other universities,
have a financial aid calculator right on our admissions page,
which won't tell you exactly --
but gives you a pretty good sense of what you'll be paying
so that you know that in advance.
-I think folks hear so much about the burden
of student loans that they don't realize that sometimes,
you know, you are going to have a loan,
but sometimes you're going to get more of a grant, right?
Isn't it -- that's --
-More than 60% of our students graduate with no known debt,
and the average known debt is just a little
over $20,000 a year at the bachelor's level.
-And for private colleges? -Yeah.
You know, I think our grant aid,
our typical grant aid is exceeding $20,000 a student
for undergraduates.
And I think, again,
graduate and professional school is different.
And I, you know, and student debt is a --
is a mixed bag, right?
I funded my entire way through law school with student loans.
And that opened to me the opportunity to be a lawyer.
And I wouldn't, right?
And I was able to go and work as a lawyer and service that debt.
And my dad paid for his whole medical school through loans
and finished paying off his loans the year
my sister started college.
-Taking on our loans. -So, I mean,
student loans are a great vehicle of opportunity as well.
And I think that the question is,
and what we need to make sure we're doing
is providing people with good information
so that they can make informed choices about
how this is going to -- how this is going to impact their lives.
We don't want students,
especially coming out of undergraduate education,
stacked up with debt
because then that's going to limit their opportunities
in terms of graduate and professional education.
But for, especially for professional education
that opens the doors to high income jobs,
I think loans are a perfectly reasonable approach.
-One of the things that I've been really pushing for,
and a lot of us have been really pushing for,
is loan repayment programs.
So for example, nurses.
That if they go into public service,
their loans, you know, over a 10-year period,
their loan will be repaid.
Or, again, if you're going into medical schools
in high need areas, in rural areas, in low-income areas,
if you're going into public law and you're a public defender,
on the other hand,
if you're going to work for a private law firm,
you should pay back your loans.
-Yeah.
Yeah, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program is amazing.
-Yeah.
-And if you work in a --
if you work in a public interest job, 10 years,
make your payments, your loans are forgiven.
-So President Penalver,
we spoke a few minutes ago about the impact
of a politically polarized environment upon colleges.
But -- and I wasn't sure
when you mentioned the three layers of this,
do colleges themselves
contribute to the polarized environment?
And if so, how?
You know, it's a -- it's an interesting question.
I don't think that --
I don't think colleges are the main driver of the polarization,
although I will say that I think there's a --
when -- I mean,
this current moment has some polarizing impact, right?
-Certainly, yeah.
But I think that's more kind of reflecting
what's going on back at society
than necessarily driving that polarization.
I will say, though, I, you know, I think that one of the reasons
colleges are a target of so much political animus is the --
is something that President Cauce pointed to,
which is the diversity of university communities.
And when you look across our societies,
universities are the most diverse communities
that exist, right?
I mean, there's nothing like a university community,
both in terms of generational diversity,
but also racial, economic, not every university, right,
but racial, economic, gender, identity diversity.
And so you -- they're very --
you'd be hard-pressed to find geographic communities
in the United States that have that, right?
And so I think one thing that happens
is students come to a university and it changes them.
You know,
the experience of living in this kind of community changes them.
And then that, in turn, sort of drives some of the reaction,
because some people don't like the change
that a university education works on the students.
-Yeah, I think that, you know,
regardless of
whether universities add to that polarization or not,
I think we do have a responsibility to try
and educate -- not to try,
to educate our students to be able to work across it.
And I think it's been incredibly difficult right now
because we're dealing with some issues
that are incredibly complicated.
Where there's a lot of passion. And, for example,
you know, our Jackson School put together a lecture series
where we really were trying to -- well,
we really did have a range of perspectives.
I've been criticized both for platforming Zionists
and for having pro Hamas speakers.
-I like the voice you go to.
-You know, I mean, you know,
that's exactly what those emails sounded like to me.
And, you know,
I figured that that must mean we got something right, you know,
that, you know, everyone --
-Well, if everyone is mad,
for us, journalists, we have succeeded.
-Yeah, sometimes.
And now we have an Islamophobia and anti-Semitism task force.
And I think among the things
that they're going to suggest
is that we include those topics in some of our DEI training
when students come into the university.
And I think that makes sense.
They'll probably find.
But I think that we do need to find,
and we are struggling to find them.
And I can say we are not at the success
where I would like us to be, to how can we find ways,
and we've been talking a lot about that,
how can we find ways
to really create dialogue across differences?
And I think it's our responsibility
to find those ways.
We're working on it.
We're not where I think we need to be.
-Well, you had one of the noisier
or more challenging speakers at the University of Washington
just last week, right?
-Yes, we did. -And how did that go?
-Well, you know, there was no serious injuries,
which we feel very, very good about.
But it was difficult because I think what we're seeing,
and that's the hard part,
is that people are speaking just to their audience.
And rather than trying to,
again, you know, speak across differences
and see where there might be some common ground,
and surprisingly,
I do think that there's places of common ground.
I do think, I believe strongly in free speech,
and it was important that we had that speaker.
-Yeah, I think that is -- that does point to one way
that, and I don't want to kind of tar all universities
with this, right?
But that universities --
some universities have contributed to
at least polarization about higher education.
I don't want to say polarization broadly, right?
But we all know the anecdotes of universities
that have failed to protect freedom of speech.
And it's been, for the most part,
it's been the freedom of speech of political conservatives,
right?
So think of the speaker at MIT,
the climate scientist
who was going to give a talk on climate science
whose talk was canceled because of op-eds
he had written about affirmative action,
which had nothing to do with the speech
he was going to be delivering at MIT.
That, you know, and of course,
and then there's a whole media industry
that's sort of built up to magnify those stories
and make sure everyone hears about them.
We don't hear about the speakers that don't get disrupted
and the speakers that are allowed onto campus.
We hear about the ones that are canceled.
But those are own goals, right?
Those are ways that we've harmed the standing of universities
and contributed to polarization about higher education.
-And I think that, you know, just to echo,
you know, I think that that's really important
that there's this sense out there
and there's at least a grain of truth in it
that all of a sudden,
some people have discovered freedom of speech.
And that in some cases these were folks
who were arguing against freedom of speech not that long ago.
What I can say very clearly about us
at the University of Washington
is that we had Milo Yiannopoulos.
We allowed our students to do a, you know, a build a wall
that was really incredibly difficult for someone like me
who's an immigrant.
We had an affirmative action bake sale
that was incredibly insulting to our students.
So it's not like we've discovered free speech now.
We really need, and exactly, this is the reason
why we have to stand up for free speech
that's really offensive
because what offends you may be different
than what offends someone else.
-Yeah,
I think the public universities have done better on this.
It's really --
this has been a phenomenon of private universities
because we're not constrained by the First Amendment.
We determine what academic freedom is,
what the boundaries of discourse are on our campuses, right?
And so it's -- that -- there's been a little bit of --
-And I want to come back to that, but I think --
-Yeah, President Penalver,
how does the social media contribute to the polarization
that colleges are currently dealing with?
-Yeah, it's very hard to --
it's hard to ignore the impact of social media.
And I think, again, it's these three dimensions, right?
It's the polarization on campus, polarization off campus,
and then the way that interacts with what's happening on campus.
You know, social media, I think,
really has had an impact of causing our ability
to disagree constructively to atrophy,
because we're not --
we just don't build those muscles anymore.
We tend to -- the algorithms are designed to
either keep us kind of focused on people
we agree with or expose us to the most outrageous versions
of the things we disagree with
that are designed to provoke strong --
-Well, social media is such a short amount of space
to say sometimes the nastiest things some person can think of.
-It incentivizes that, right?
And so -- -Yes, it does.
And the anonymity --
-And that has an impact on how discourse goes on campus, right?
And then also anything that happens on campus
then gets thrown out into social media in a way
that some little incident that would have --
could have been managed in a really kind of reparative way
before the rise of social media now becomes viral
and, you know,
brings in all these outside forces onto the campus
and distorts the university response.
So it's a real -- social media is a real challenge for --
-I think even, you know, I mean,
one thing that sometimes we forget, too,
is it creates a bubble. So, for example,
if I read this kind of news,
everything else that comes through my feed is from that.
I was having a disagreement with a friend
or we were having a conversation with a friend who --
this was around a particular COVID drug
that had been found to not work. And, you know, and --
-Well, you didn't take the -- no, I'm just --
-This was, you know, one, you know, let's,
you know, just, you know.
But in any case,
what was really interesting is this friend went out
and did a web search and she came up with, you know,
a number of websites that looked very real that, you know,
so that even if you are trying to look further,
that it creates a bubble. And, you know, I -- you know,
that there was -- you know, you choose the news that you watch.
And so all --
what you already believe just gets reinforced
and reinforced and reinforced.
-And there's a good research on this
that when you are engaged in that way with people
who think like you and that's who you primarily engage with,
it increases your extremism in support of that view, right?
Whatever that view is that -- -It's reaffirming.
-It kind of reaffirms
and takes you kind of further to the extreme of that perspective
where when you engage with people who disagree with you,
it causes you to sort of question your own views
a little more and it resists extremism.
And so social media,
to the extent that it separates us into groups of people
who agree with one another,
is going to drive polarization and it does it very effectively.
-President Penalver,
a survey last week of 1,250 college students
nationwide by something called Generation Lab,
I've seen other surveys on this as well,
show a majority of students rate healthcare,
education funding, inflation, and the economy,
as top issues for students, well ahead of the Mideast,
I think ranked 13th among students' top priorities.
How do you ensure that protesters' needs, you know,
sort of the loudest voices sometimes,
don't overwhelm the interests of other students?
-I mean, I think it's all --
this is not a new challenge, right?
I mean, this is -- to me, it's the challenge
of higher education administration generally.
You know, when I became a dean,
someone told me, you know, you spend 90% of your time on,
you know, the 10% of the community
that's the most agitated.
And the key is to sort of -- you need to do that, right?
You need to work with people who are agitated,
but you also need to keep your eye on the ball of the other 90%
and make sure the work of the university
is continuing to move forward.
And I just think that's -- it's just a juggling act
and it's particularly challenging right now,
but it's always part of the challenge.
-I think that's the case on a range of topics,
not just this topic,
but certainly, I mean, it's no secret.
If you've been watching TV or whatever,
we have a liberated zone or an encampment,
depending on how you'd like to talk about it, on our campus.
And, you know, and people have been thinking that,
you know, it's taken over everything.
And it was interesting.
I took a walk-through campus the other day
and our law school was having a beach day
and they were giving out free popsicles.
And people were dressed in, you know, in beach clothes.
And we had a bunch of school children
that were coming to watch a play at the Meany.
And there was a concert on the Lawn.
And, you know, most students were going about their lives
and enjoying the sun and not necessarily concerned
with what was going on in the Quad.
What we are, of course, concerned about at this point,
because we have had two major, two incidences this week
that have been extremely concerning.
Is that when does that start encroaching
on the ability of our other students
to focus on those things that they care about the most?
-Some critics of universities,
and you know this question is coming
because you've addressed it at least once or twice
here, say we are creating a generation
of elitists or snowflakes or both.
Have we coddled, and you use that word,
students too much with trigger alerts and safe spaces?
-You know, I think
that we can always come up with a particular incident,
a particular situation,
or a particular anecdote that's gone too far.
But, for example, in terms of trigger warnings,
I taught an abnormal psychology class for years.
And I found, after the first couple of times
that I taught it,
that there were always students who believed
that they were mentally ill.
After, you know, and so I always started the class by saying,
you know, as you read this material,
you're probably going to find yourself in,
you know, in these various diagnoses.
If you find a little bit of yourself in all of them,
you're probably fine.
If only one of you suits you,
please come and talk to me and we'll talk about a referral.
You could have called that a trigger warning.
I was doing that well before we had such things
as trigger warnings.
You know, I do think that trying to find a way
to be respectful to differences in your classes,
we now know an alarming number of women
have had some encounters with sexual abuse.
It's incredibly large.
So if you are going to be dealing with a book
with that kind of material, giving a little bit of advance,
this material might be difficult for some people.
You know, what you see often is it gets parroted
as this kind of really strange thing.
The truth is that on the one hand,
we do, we have a lot more understanding of
how to be trauma-informed, et cetera, than we used to be.
But the bottom line is our students is probably
the less coddled generation that we have ever had
because we have low-income students,
because we have -- and we have students that before,
for example, let's say students with mental health problems.
Many of these students wouldn't make it onto our campuses
before, but because of better services in,
you know, elementary schools and high schools
and better counseling, they are making it on.
There are students with disabilities
that didn't used to make it on our campuses
that now are making it onto our campuses.
This is the least coddled generation that I can think of.
-Yeah, just moving a little bit forward.
Colleges and universities
are under increased scrutiny from Congress.
What's the impact of Congress
calling college presidents before them
to question them about campus activities?
How does that help or hurt this current situation?
-Well, I don't think it's a question
of calling college campuses --
calling college presidents to Congress.
We have often testified in Congress
about a number of things.
It is the way that it has been done.
-But it's also about how you folks are conducting yourselves.
It's very pointed. It's not about an issue.
It's about your own conduct as presidents.
-But it's also coming from a very clear perspective.
It's very -- anyone who listens to these,
it's clear that a number of people
are coming in already with the intention
not of really having an open conversation,
but of looking for that gotcha moment.
You know, again, whether it's coincidence or not,
the first set of people
that were brought up were not just that they were all women,
but they'd all been at their universities
for less than two years.
So they were particularly new to the job
and having to answer for decisions
that were really made by other folks.
-Well, and I think it's telling, right,
that you have these two sets of testimonies.
And the first group took one approach,
which was a very lawyerly approach to answering
these questions about --
-Not that there's anything wrong with it.
-Nothing wrong with being lawyerly.
Very balanced, right?
And they got attacked for, you know, how --
when they were asked to, you know,
chanting from the river to the sea as, you know,
violation of their speech codes.
And they gave an appropriately nuanced response.
And the Congresswoman called for their resignation.
And then, you know,
I think when the president of Columbia was called,
she saw what had happened. She took the opposite approach.
And the next day,
the Congresswoman was calling for her resignation.
So that was truly a no-win episode.
-Well, you're the lawyer on the stage here.
Do you folks have to testify?
-No, you don't. -And should you?
-No. -Please help us.
-That was -- you know,
someone asked me after the first set of testimony,
what was their biggest mistake?
And I said going, right?
I mean, unless someone brings a subpoena,
why would you go?
It was clearly a setup.
-Although I have to admit that the public school teachers
that testified did a much better job.
-Oh!
-It's true. -I missed that one.
I didn't see that.
-I think that part of what they did
was that they questioned the premise.
And that's where I think that things kind of went off.
That, you know, one thing is not going at all,
but another thing is if you go,
this is not a court of law and you don't have to answer
every question exactly as it's asked.
And when a question is a got you --
-Couldn't you just say --
and I think somebody did this at the very beginning.
Couldn't you just say, you know, I have an appointment that day?
Or I have a doctor's appointment?
Or I have, you know, some other panel I'm doing?
-Or I just choose not to come.
-Or I'm not -- yeah.
-Bring me a subpoena. You don't have to go.
It was totally voluntary.
And I can imagine the conversations
because when that invitation comes, you know, the --
not to pick on the marketing communications people.
But they're like, oh, this is a great opportunity to,
you know, elevate the reputation of the university.
-They want you out. They want you in public.
-That was one that I think you could have taken a pass on.
-But it did seem, you know, at least from the outside,
you know -- and again, I don't want to criticize my colleagues.
I don't know what kind of pressures they were under, etc.
And like I say, they were very new presidents,
including the Columbia president.
They'd all been there for less than two year, and --
-But would it have gone any different
if they were five-year presidents?
-I actually think so.
-Really?
-I think just because you have more experience
with that kind of gotcha moments and how to deal with them.
But they were prepared as if this were --
they were testifying in front of a court of law.
And that was the way that their answers came across.
And it wasn't.
This was really about the public.
-President Penalver, you have to wonder, --
and you touched on this.
This is about confidence in higher ed.
The number of Republicans -- so I'm pulling out a group here,
expressing a lot of confidence in higher ed
plummeted to 19% last year, down from 56% eight years prior.
Largely because of cost, as you talked about.
But also due to a belief that universities just,
you know, are pushing some kind of political agenda.
-Yeah, there's a polarization in the loss of trust.
So people on the political left
have also seen a decline in trust in higher ed.
It's not as dramatic as conservatives.
But that's the group that's been more focused on cost.
And I would say conservatives have been
more focused on ideology. And I think, you know,
some of that is reflecting a bit of a reality, right?
That there are -- I mean, the data shows there are --
and this varies regionally,
and it varies by kind of institution.
But fewer conservatives on campus, right?
So there are fewer conservative faculty,
fewer conservative students.
And so it's perceived as a less friendly place
for conservatives, right? So there's a reality there.
Some of it is this,
kind of, feedback loop that we've gotten into now, right?
Where the conservative media is attacking
higher education relentlessly.
Any negative story will get blown out
over conservative media.
And so if you're a conservative, and you're looking at that,
you think, ma, that's not for me.
And then you see -- like, just the other day,
a group of conservative judges said,
"We're not going to hire anyone
who graduates from Columbia Law School."
Now, I know how conservative judges hire,
and they tend to hire conservative law students.
So what that means is,
if you're a conservative law student
who went to Columbia Law School, I'm not going to hire you.
So that is going to further deter conservatives
from going to Columbia Law School.
So you know, there are these, sort of,
feedback loops that have set in --
-That is a loop. That is absolutely a loop.
-I think we need to look at two things.
One is who the change -- there's been a real change in
who identifies as being conservative.
This is, you know, no law -- the Goldwater conservatives,
if you want to think about that, tended to be more high income.
Now we are really dealing with a different level.
And I do think that we bear some responsibility.
I want to be clear.
I think we should be doing much more outreach
to low income students in rural environments.
We've been doing that through,
for example, our RIDE program in medicine.
And, you know, we've been doing more and more of that,
but I think we need to do even more.
We are now at a point where nationally,
it's almost 60% of college students are women.
There's a male problem.
-I've seen it in the classrooms.
I've seen it in the classrooms.
-I mean, you know, at the UW,
it isn't anywhere near that way, but it's real.
And so, for example,
we have a brotherhood initiative
that is largely for men of color,
but also includes low income students.
We need to --
I do think that we need to look at diversity more broadly
and really look at some sectors
that we haven't traditionally been doing outreach to.
-Yeah.
President Cauce,
first I'll quote from an article you wrote in March.
"Far from retreating from the fray at this pivotal moment
for our country and the world,
those of us in positions of leadership
at major universities need to ask not whether,
but how our universities can best play a role
in meeting the urgency of this moment
and the challenge to come."
In general,
should universities take side in the events of the day?
And what are the requirements if they do take a stand?
-Well, I think that, you know,
that there is -- you know,
folks may be aware of the Calvin principles that are out there.
And I don't think it's -- -Can you explain the Calvin?
-The Calvin principles came out of University of Chicago.
And they basically --
if you just, you know, read them superficially,
what they seem to say
is that universities should be neutral on political positions.
Because if they're not, they quelch free speech.
Truth is that they're more nuanced than that.
And in fact, the son of Calvin says
that too many presidents are using them as a shield
to not have to say anything. So but in any case,
I'm going to talk less about the Calvin principles
than the way they've been used,
which is that we should stay out of the fray.
You know, I think we need to be very careful about
how we get involved in the fray.
And we need to be careful that when we do make statements
that we are not silencing
and there's different ways that one can do that.
But, you know, I mean, look,
almost any topic can be politicized.
Should we not be involved in seeking solutions
to the climate problems?
Because some people say that, you know, they're not manmade.
You know, should we -- I mean, I think it is absolutely critical,
but I do think that the issue is how do we do it in a way
that does listen to the diversity of voices
and that doesn't silence. -Yeah.
President Penalver, I read in an article
you wrote in May of 2023 discussing free speech.
How neutral should universities, including Seattle University,
be on issues like the war in Gaza right now?
-So I would distinguish between neutrality as a,
kind of, substantive value,
and weighing in or making statements.
I think those are two different questions, right?
So I agree that the Calvin commission's or committee's
report, I think lends itself to this very strong account
of neutrality, right?
That universities should not take positions at all.
And that's a broad claim, right? Because that means taking --
you take a position through giving a statement,
but you can also take a position by taking an action.
And we take actions all the time on things
that are controversial.
So the examples I've given are, you know, climate change.
We're trying to be a carbon neutral campus
and we've divested from fossil fuels.
Those are actions that we've taken
that take a position on climate change, right?
That's different than silencing people who disagree with us,
or just making empty statements about climate change.
We take action. Affirmative action, right?
Politically controversial.
We have staked out a position on the importance of diversity
and the relevance of taking race into account
in order to achieve a kind of diversity
that we want to achieve on our campus.
And certainly before the Supreme Court,
you know, changed the law on that.
So, you know, you can take a position --
it's impossible for universities to be neutral.
The question of whether to issue a statement is a different one.
And that's one
where I've taken a very parsimonious approach
because I think for two reasons.
One is statements don't accomplish anything,
except maybe stake out an orthodoxy and
silence people who disagree.
And also there's been a,
kind of, inflationary economy of statement making
over the last 10 years.
Where universities were expected to make more
and more statements.
And so then when you don't make a statement,
people infer you don't care. And so --
-Silence means something, right?
-Yeah, silence, you know,
so you have to be really cautious about
when you weigh in.
And the line I've drawn is I weigh in on things
that relate to things that we're doing,
that relate to Seattle University.
Rather than weighing in just in an abstract way
about events in the world. In part,
because of the wrongness of doing that in any given instance
in terms of who it silences.
But also the precedent it sets for the next one,
and the next one, and the next one.
-I think it is really important to have -- you know,
for people to sit down and have clear policies about when.
I do think that often world problems do end up affecting
people in our university very closely.
One of our recent graduates was killed during the Hamas attack.
It hit very close to home. In natural disasters,
we have some that really affect a lot of our students.
Hawaii, because we have a large --
and then there are others that don't affect that many.
And all of those things go into thinking
about do we say something or not?
-Yeah.
Actually, in an announcement from your office last Friday,
you said you thought,
official statements can be empty gestures.
Actions matter more.
So can you please tell us
how that is playing a part right now at Seattle University?
-Well, I'll use the example from that communication, right?
Because we've had calls from segments
of our student body and others
to evaluate our relationship with Boeing.
Or to evaluate our endowment investments in relation
to the conflict in Israel and Gaza, right?
To divesting the endowment as we did with fossil fuels.
And so what I said we would do in that statement
is we will set up a sort of --
we'll have meetings and we'll bring leaders from the board.
These are board issues.
Whether and how we invest ultimately are board decisions.
So we're going to bring together the leader
of the investment committee of our board,
the CFO who's responsible for that relationship,
and the outside company that manages our investments,
Cambridge Associates.
And look at what -- if you ask me today,
are we invested in anything related to Israel?
I can't tell you the answer because it changes day to day
and we don't have a policy against it, right?
But I don't know exactly what's in our endowment
at any given moment. So we'll look at it
and then we'll have further conversations.
We've set the precedent, right,
with climate change of, you know,
using the endowment as a vehicle for university policy.
You know, there's a risk in terms of taking that too far,
right?
How many different limitations can we put
around our investment managers?
But, you know, once we're down that road,
I think it's only consistent to
at least entertain the conversation.
So that's an action, right?
And so we'll -- that's why I made the statement
that I made last week.
Look, here's the actions we're taking.
Here are the things that we can do.
But I again said,
I'm not going to issue a statement kind of laying
out an official university position
on a really complex issue of international relations.
It's not -- I don't feel qualified to do it.
And I don't think it accomplishes anything
for the university. -Could you reach --
because we've talked a little bit about the differences
between public and private universities.
But can you just like, quickly note what you can do and not do,
and what you can do and what you can't do, or however that goes?
Just because there are differences
as we're dealing with all this polarization.
-Well, it's -- you know,
I mean, I'm sure I can't come up with a full list.
But for example,
our investments are all transparent
and students have made -- you know,
they were making FOIA requests.
And I said, we can give this to you, you know?
I mean, give us a list of the companies we should look at
and we can tell you.
You know, it's not, you know, that there's nothing behind,
you know, that it is --
-FOIA requests take forever, is the new --
-Right.
But I'm saying that, you know, we've said,
you don't have to --
but I'm saying you don't have to -- you know,
we can give that to you.
And we did have some students meet with one of the folks
who manages our endowment portfolio.
And as it turns out,
we actually have no investments in weapon companies,
and we have no investments in companies
that are cited in Israel. Direct investments.
There's the indirect investments,
index funds and managers, etc., etc.
So what I'm saying is that we have a level of transparency
that might take a while,
but that all our faculty salaries are out there.
If I give someone a raise, it is clear.
My salary, everyone knows what it is.
So there's a transparency.
There's also one other thing that's very different is,
like I say, our university inside the classrooms,
I have some control.
But in terms of, you know, whether it's Red Square,
or the Quad, etc., anybody can come.
And on any given day,
you know, we have people out there that are doing things
that some group or other would find offensive.
You know, whether it's pictures of, you know, dead fetuses.
Or whether we have someone out there that is -- you know,
we've had some -- no question. Some groups coming down
and doing protests against the Middle East using slogans
that have been incredibly offensive.
And in some cases,
blatantly anti-Semitic, like, we don't want no Zionists here.
And, you know, we need to allow that.
We need to allow -- -Send to English class, no?
-You know, we need to, you know, allow.
And so that is required.
We can't close our campus in any way, shape or form.
-Are there a few that --?
-I think those are the key differences.
I mean, we have more discretion about the scope of speech
that we allow on our campus.
That said, we've made a choice as an academic institution
to robustly protect academic freedom and freedom of speech.
But the real --
where the difference really has teeth
is with respect to outside groups.
So we don't have to rent out our facilities to,
you know, Yiannopoulos or whatever,
Yiannopoulos, whatever his name was.
You know, you don't -- some incendiary speaker.
We don't have to create access for that on our campus.
And we generally yoke our protection of speech
and academic freedom to our educational mission.
-President Cauce,
how does the ongoing debate over academic freedom,
freedom of speech and democracy
impact the standing of universities
as respected institutions?
Particularly in light of recent events?
-Well, I think it is really -- you know,
what's been interesting has been watching
how the shape of those have changed.
Not that long ago,
you would have heard a lot of students and faculty
saying they needed to ban hate speech.
And now all of a sudden,
you know, that's less of less of an issue.
And so we've seen them evolve,
which is exactly why I think that there --
I think it is absolutely critical
that we have free speech and that we have academic freedom.
There will be always, you know, those moments
when, you know, right at the edge, we can have some debates.
But I think that they're absolutely important.
And I think that the moment that we're experiencing now
really brings home for some people
exactly why it is that important to do that.
Having said that, I think that it also --
and that's what's difficult about campuses
is that even though some things are free speech,
it doesn't mean that students --
that it doesn't actually hurt students.
I can tell you the affirmative --
the build the wall was particularly difficult
for me as an immigrant to this country.
But I think that as universities,
we focused a lot on being safe spaces.
Safe spaces are important, but so are brave spaces.
How do we teach our students to deal with the fact
that, guess what?
No matter who they are,
there's someone out there that doesn't like them.
-Yeah. Yeah.
President Penalver,
do you believe
that the current downward reputational trajectory
of prominent American universities
historically interested with shaping the nation's
future citizens independent from political influence
poses a threat to future democracy?
-Sorry, I didn't get the first -- there was a word
in the beginning of the question that I didn't --
-Do you believe that the current downward reputational --
yeah.
-Yeah, I do think it -- I mean,
I think that universities play an essential role in
in educating the leadership of our country.
The civic leadership of our country, right?
Our mission statement at Seattle University calls on us
to empower leaders, right, for a just and humane world.
So it's really -- if you think about what --
how have we defined the educational --
the core of our educational mission?
It's educating leaders.
And a key part of that is learning to engage with people
who think differently from you.
It's developing the ability to understand
complex issues and engage on them
to understand the complexity of the issues, right?
But the downward reputation of higher education
means that over time,
our ability to attract potential future leaders
and the breadth of potential future leaders
that we need to be educating is going to decline.
And the faith that people have in the leaders
we're producing is going to decline.
So we need to find a way
to engage constructively with the broader society
about what higher education is, what it's not,
and to try to -- I mean, I think it's a real problem
that that trust in higher education
is declining as rapidly as it is.
We need to find a way to reverse that decline.
-Yeah, I think that it's really -- you know,
that the moment and the complexity
of our society require more education
to be informed citizens rather than less.
You know, we focus a lot on the importance
of more education for the workforce.
And that's incredibly important.
But it's there for democracy.
For example,
if you're going to be a good juror,
you better understand DNA
because they will bring in DNA evidence.
And if you don't understand what that is,
you're not going to be a good juror.
Anybody needs to begin -- you know,
we have a center for the informed public
that's trying to train people to,
how do you read through social media?
How do you ask the right questions?
AI is going to make that even more important.
So there is no question
that universities play an incredibly important role.
And we need our citizenry to be more educated, not less.
-Sign of the Times. And this is for either of you.
Are you hiring K Street PR firms
to lobby Congress on your behalf?
According to Politico, many -- dozens of them.
I think you're going to get a knock on the door
pretty soon here.
Are hearing from these firms because they're saying,
you know,
how are we going to be better connected in Washington, DC?
How are we going to burnish our image?
Are you doing that?
Or what do you think of that? -We are not as --
-Neither are we.
-We do not have lobbyists.
-Okay.
Well, then what other steps are you folks taking to,
kind of, get at what you were saying a moment ago,
President Penalver, to raise up the image,
the confidence of universities? -Well, I -- you know,
I like what President Cauce said about community engagement.
I think starting locally is really important
and making sure that we're engaging constructively
with the communities around Seattle University,
and with the city of Seattle,
and the political community that we're a part of.
And I think we do that really well.
We can always look for new ways to do it.
Think of new ways we can serve the community.
And actually, this forum is a great example of that.
And we like to talk about Seattle University as a,
kind of, living room
for the city to come and discuss, and debate.
Making sure that we're providing an atmosphere
where that can happen.
And that we're addressing topics that are salient
and useful to the community.
So we just had, last week,
continuing education that is -- was run for several hundred --
-- criminal justice professionals
that's run by our department of criminal justice and forensics.
And so, you know, there --
all kinds of things like that that we can do.
The Center for Community Engagement,
which works extensively in the neighborhoods
around Seattle University is another example.
So I think that's a way
that we can really build our reputation locally.
And then that's the foundation.
I think if every university attended to that reputation
locally, we'd be in better shape.
-Yeah. In fact --
-So I'm quickly running out of time
and I want to get one question in.
And then Abigail has the last question for us today.
And we've got to go quick here.
President Biden has said -- and everybody knows this,
there has been a ferocious surge of anti-Semitism
on college campuses throughout the country.
Is it an understatement to say this is a teachable moment?
-That is absolutely not an understatement.
It is absolutely a very real issue across our society
to think that our campuses are immune to it.
I've got to say that last night -- and we had a lot of people
from outside the university on our campus.
Some of the graffiti was absolutely abhorrent
and very clearly anti-Semitic. There's no question.
I don't think it was our students.
But nonetheless, it's on our campus.
And we need to deal with that.
And that's part of why we have an anti-Semitism task force.
-President Penalver,
is activism part of the education process?
Is activism?
-You know, I think it's definitely activism is a part
of the educational experience.
And it's a long tradition on university campuses.
And it's something that was part of my educational experience,
for sure.
And you learn important skills by engaging in
in student activism or other kinds of activism.
So I do think it's an important part of the educational process.
I think most universities make space for it and welcome it.
But also because it's an educational experience,
I think we need to guide it and make sure
that it's actually an educational experience,
that it advanced our students' understanding of the world
and their impact on the world.
Right?
And so we have a responsibility to allow it and to, kind of,
create space for it,
but also to guide it in some respects.
-So 20 seconds. Did you want to add to that?
-No, there is no question that,
you know, activism is an important part of life.
And, you know, we want our students to be socially engaged,
to be civically engaged. There's no question about that.
But I think that what it's our responsibility to try and do is,
how do you get them to do that in a way that's constructive?
And that's actually going to lead to change,
rather than to more division.
And how do you do it then it's a way that is constructive?
Where my activism,
my free speech rights don't interfere with yours?
-So we are out of time.
Hearty thanks to the presidents of Seattle University
and the University of Washington.
Thanks to this wonderful, respectful audience.
And thanks to all of you for watching.
[ Applause ]
♪♪